Halloween is one of the most fun times of the year for decorating because you can be so clever and creative to get into the spirit of the season. For this holiday, you can take a cute, scary, or funny approach to suit your style and impress your friends and neighbors.
Managing the kids and decorating your home for trick or treaters can be challenging to handle alone, though. Thankfully, families can rely on nanny services to get assistance with all the festive Halloween prep! Here are some fun ideas to try out when celebrating Halloween this year.
Decorate Your House’s Interior with Halloween Home Decor
If you plan to host a Halloween party this year, you’ll definitely want to deck out certain rooms of your house with indoor decorations. For parties, you can create a Halloween-inspired table setting with a witch cauldron, spooky candles, skulls, and themed plates and napkins. It’s also fun to set up snack and drink stations with ghost-shaped balloons, a candy bowl shaped like a head, and perhaps some DIY craft creations with festive messages like “Trick or treat” and “Boo!”
If you have a fireplace in your home, the mantle is always a great focal point for decorations. Decorate this area with a fall wreath, pumpkins, candles, and glowing lights. You can also add fake spider webs with plastic spiders to your walls, hang antique-style hologram portraits for a haunting vibe, and hide motion-sensor ghouls in corners of the rooms to give your guests a fright.
Get Creative with Outdoor Halloween Decoration Ideas
Additionally, you could consider showing off your spooky spirit to all your neighbors with some outdoor Halloween decoration ideas too. You can buy plenty of pre-made outdoor décor at your local pop-up Halloween store if you’re pressed for time or just want to go “all out” with a theme. Start with some pumpkins or carved jack-o-lanterns on your porch, and then hang a wreath or some garland around doors and windows in the festive colors of orange, black, green, and purple.
Other ideas for outdoor spaces include windsocks shaped like ghosts, a fake graveyard with skulls and tombstones, and creepy pairs of eyes hiding in the bushes. Battery-powered and motion-sensor decorations are fun for outdoor areas too, especially if you are expecting trick-or-treaters to come ring your doorbell. Fake coffins, crime scene tape, hanging plastic bats, and fake witch legs sticking out from a shrub or garage door can also give your neighbors a scare or a chuckle, depending on how you use them!
Take Your Kids to the Pumpkin Patch
Fall is a fun time of year for families because there are so many festive events and activities to experience together. Pumpkin patches are especially popular right now because they’re exciting for kids, offer excellent photo opportunities, and can help you decorate your home with seasonal décor. And if you don’t have time to take your kids to a pumpkin patch this year, our nanny services can help your little ones pick a pumpkin and enjoy the beauty of the season.
Pro tip: When selecting high-quality pumpkins, note that there is more to picking out a great pumpkin than just the vegetable’s color and texture. Pay attention to the pumpkins’ stems and choose ones that are dark green and firm, rather than brown or very dry. You should choose one that feels firm and doesn’t have soft spots.
Carve Pumpkins with Your Kids
It’s a tradition for many kids and their families to decorate and carve pumpkins into spooky and fun jack-o-lanterns every Halloween. But beyond the simple eyes, nose, and mouth style, it can be challenging to come up with new ideas for pumpkin carving each year.
To inspire you, here are some creative ideas for pumpkin carving designs:
- Carved Pumpkin Bowl: Who says your pumpkin can’t be both functional and decorative? One idea is to slice a large pumpkin in half horizontally and scoop everything out from the bottom half. Then you can fill the bottom with juice boxes on ice, wrapped candy, or party favors. Don’t forget to decorate the outside of the pumpkin’s bottom half with spiders, spider webs, or other Halloween décor.
- Diorama Pumpkins: Kids are sometimes tasked with making dioramas for school projects, so this pumpkin carving idea should come naturally to them! Cut a large, oval hole in the front of your pumpkin and scoop out the insides. Then you can fill the space with anything you like to make a festive fall scene, such as miniature tombstones, tiny trees, and a moon in the sky.
- Colorful Mini-Carved Pumpkins: Most people only think about carving the big orange pumpkins, but you can make a carving activity with those small white pumpkins too. To give white pumpkins a bit of color, you can soak them in food coloring in the same way you would for Easter eggs. Since the pumpkins are small, keep your carving designs simple and traditional, with just a face. The easy part is that you don’t even need to scoop out the inside materials; just cut the face out from the front side. These make excellent table decorations for a party or can be placed around the house for daily enjoyment.
Get Assistance for a Stress-free Halloween!
Although activities like pumpkin carving and heading to the pumpkin patch can be tons of fun, not all parents have the time to sit down with their kids to do this time-consuming activity right now. Moreover, putting up and taking down Halloween decorations is a lot of hard work and not something that everyone has time or energy for. This is where a professional estate manager or property caretaker can step in to make your home a beautiful and festive place during the changing seasons and throughout the holidays.
Nannies also specialize in making the holidays fun for kids and doing all of the festive activities with them that parents can’t always get around to. During the recent pandemic times, nannies have needed to get especially creative with planning kid-friendly activities by scheduling in-craft days, at-home fitness classes, gardening sessions, improv games, and science projects. Pumpkin carving, taking your kids on outings, and assisting with putting up the Halloween decorations are just some things your nanny can do with your children when you hire one from Household Staffing International!